The new iPhone X is seen on display at the Apple Union Square store on Nov. 3, 2017, in San Francisco. The iPhone X's lush screen, facial-recognition skills and $1,000 price tag are breaking new ground in Apple's marquee product line. Now, the much-anticipated device is testing the patience of consumers and investors as demand outstrips suppliers' capacity.(Photo11: Eric Risberg, AP)

Apple will almost certainly take the wraps off its iOS 12 operating system at its Worldwide Developers Conference that starts Monday. With that reveal comes the first clues about the next iPhone and iPad.

You can’t rule out surprises, but the pre-WWDC run-up suggests an iOS upgrade that will be relatively light on elaborate new features and instead focus on stability. Since iOS 11 has had its share of bugs and other issues, an emphasis on reliability would be a positive.

Even with iOS 12 on the horizon, Apple hasn’t stopped bolstering its current mobile operating system. It just added the Messages in iCloud feature as part of the iOS 11.4 update, which lets you store your messages, photos and other attachments in the cloud to free up space on your devices.

An iOS 12 upgrade will not only affect future iPhones and iPads but also freshen up the phone or tablet that you already own. Keeping this in mind, here are items on my iOS 12 wish list.

More robust parental controls

Apple's parental controls on the iPhone, found under Restrictions inside the device settings, let you tighten the reins on the kind of content your kid sees or uses. But what's missing are granular time-limit app-by-app controls a caregiver can use to restrict when, and for how long, your child is involved in such activities. In other words, it lacks a key tool to combat smartphone addiction.

I’ve got fingers crossed that such time-limit controls will be announced next week.

The best of the iPhone X

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See how Apple's new facial recognition system works in real life.
USA TODAY

Owners of the iPhone X, the only iPhone to ditch the home button, have had to learn new navigational gestures. The betting here is that some, if not all future iPhones, will similarly do away with the home button and instead have the user rely on Face ID facial recognition.

What this means, I hope, is that Apple will adopt some of the existing navigational behavior on the X as part of iOS 12, while doing away with others.

Swiping up from the bottom of the screen to get to the home screen is a simple gesture that works well, a keeper. I’m also a fan of the way you can switch apps by swiping at the bottom of the display.

The iPhone X app switcher(Photo11: Edward C. Baig)

Alas, I can’t say the same for the hoops you have to go through on the X to dismiss a running app. You must first summon the app switcher or multitasking screen by swiping up and pausing for a second or so. My inclination at this point is to swipe up on a card representing a running app to remove it. But that’s not how it works on the X. Instead, you must press down for a moment on a card until a circled red dash appears on the upper left corner. Only then can you you swipe up to dismiss that app and any others.

Apple should streamline this process by not requiring this latter step.

Smarter Siri

Forgive me if you’ve heard this one before, but Apple’s assistant lacks the brainpower of Amazon’s rival Alexa and the Google Assistant. It’s time for Siri to not only bone up on its smarts but to become more conversational. Oh, and make nice with many more third-party apps and services.

Address Wi-Fi confusion

You can tap an icon in the Control Center on the iPhone to turn Wi-Fi on or off. At least that’s what you think you’re doing when you tap that icon. Instead, it merely disables your connection from the Wi-Fi network you’ve been on. A moment later you might connect to another nearby Wi-Fi network, whether you want to or not. To truly disable Wi-Fi, you must visit settings on the phone and tap a switch there, an extra step that’s irritating.

Improve 3D Touch

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Ed Baig of USA TODAY introduces 3D touch, of the new features of the iPhone 6s and 6s+.
USA TODAY

I don’t know a lot of people who use the pressure-sensitive 3D Touch feature on their iPhones, or at least use it very often. The feature has been around since 2015, when Apple released the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. Three years later, the onus is on Apple to make 3D Touch more appealing and customizable.

What 3D Touch lets you do is apply a little bit of force on an icon so that a contextual “quick action” shortcut menu pops up— the ability, say, to take a selfie or record video when you press down on the Camera icon, or call a favorite person when you press the Phone icon. That's fine.

But too often those shortcuts just aren’t very useful. A suggestion: Why not give the user some say on what shortcuts controls do or don’t appear inside apps when you apply pressure? Or even let users who don’t want to bother with 3D Touch turn it off?

What’s more, I find that the pressure-sensitive requirements are, well, a bit too sensitive. You’ve long been able to gently press down on the iPhone’s home screen to make all the icons wiggle. When they do, you can move icons around on the screen, and by tapping an “X” delete those you don’t want. Unfortunately, if you press down too hard on screen with 3D Touch, you don’t get the wiggly icons, but rather those quick action shortcuts.

Group FaceTime calls

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Four years of FaceTime created an incredible friendship. But they had never met in real life, until now.
Humankind, USA TODAY

I use FaceTime all the time to make and receive video calls. As long as I have a decent connection, FaceTime works great. It's time for FaceTime to do more. For starters, let Apple open things up so you can hold video calls with multiple people on FaceTime. On Skype, for example, you can organize a video call for up to 10 folks. While we’re at it, I also would like the ability to leave video messages when the people you call aren’t available to FaceTime.

Design and display changes

A design refresh is in the eyes of the beholder, of course, and I’m not calling for wholesale changes, just a little more flexibility. The grid of icons on the Home screen is functional but frankly getting tired, and I’d like to see some way to liven things up. Maybe the icons reveal more information at a glance — a snowflake on the weather app to indicate, say, that a storm is coming. And if you’re wary about such changes, why not have a “classic” screen option that more or less keeps the status quo design?

Speaking of the screen, I'd like future iPhones to have an “always-on” display option like we’ve seen on other devices. Such a screen would also surface glanceable information —the time, weather, maybe some notifications from the people with whom you most need to stay in touch.

Still another display option would let you choose a dark-screen motif, an interface loosely along the lines of the “Invert Colors” feature that is currently buried inside the Accessibility settings of the iPhone. Such a mode might appeal to folks with a near bezel-free iPhone like the iPhone X.

Visual search

Google Lens.(Photo11: Google)

Google is just now rolling out new tools for an artificial-intelligence driven visual search feature called Google Lens, which lets you point the camera on an Android phone at objects and signs to do such things as copy and paste real-world text, provides style and shopping details on clothing, reveal details about a painting, and so on.

The tech is cool but still in its nascent stages, and I’d like to see Apple, through iOS 12 and the cameras on the iPhones, come at it as well.

Apple also has ambitions with augmented reality, which was a big part of iOS 11. I'd expect more advancements in this area.

iMessage on Android

Apple’s popular iMessages service is locked inside iOS and MacOS ecosystems for competitive purposes, and though there’ve been some third-party workarounds, that leaves Android users in the dark. iMessages provide such niceties as “read receipts,” full-resolution photos, large group chats, end-to-end encryption, and so on. For now, back and forth messages between iOS and Android are sent via old-fashion SMS text messages and are not encrypted.

I’m not expecting Apple to announce a strategic about-face next week when it comes to opening up its Messages app to competitive platforms. But, hey, that’s what a wish list is all about.

Stick with USA TODAY on Monday, to see which, if any of these items, makes the list of iOS 12 features that Apple actually announces.